


two easy pieces for four hands

by parenthetic (renaissance)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 06:10:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12126249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/parenthetic
Summary: A view of death from either side.





	two easy pieces for four hands

**Author's Note:**

> First is for a prompt from puwao on tumblr (the first sentence), second is for a prompt from delineative (things you said while we were driving). I only had two small Raven Cycle fics and I thought they worked nicely paired, so... !
> 
> (Written 21/5/16)

It was a dark and stormy night, and Gansey wanted to fight a cliché. Heavy clouds blanketed the sky and the rain fell in great sheets, sluicing years-old layers of Henrietta dust off the roof of Monmouth Manufacturing and splashing into the grassy yard below. On any other night, this would be the beginning of a horror movie, or a harbinger of doom—but Gansey did not care for atmospheres, and he did not need another ill omen over his head.

Instead, he leant out the window, letting the rain spray his face, his glasses safe inside and his vision fraying at the edges. He looked out into the dark of the night and the darkness looked back, and he told the darkness,  _not today_.

He had stared death in the face once before; he would do it again.

 

* * *

 

Gansey’s at the wheel.

It’s night, and they’re heading home. Noah has to reorient himself, feel for the date, the time—when he’s settled, he can breathe. Gansey’s always at the wheel. Ronan’s always at the passenger seat. Blue is always by his side.

They left Adam at a crossroads and they’ll leave Blue at 300 Fox Way, and then it’ll be the three of them. Then, Noah will leave Ronan and Gansey, and then, he will find them again. He grounds himself, for now, in the backseat of the Pig, presses his palm to the leather of the seat, trying to remember what it feels like to feel.

And Blue.

He wants to tell Blue, he wants so badly to reassure her that he can see her beginning and her end and that of everything he expected to find in this time and this place, it was never her, it was always her. He loves her, he does—he loves her fiercely, like the feeling of warming your hands over a broken down car’s bonnet, like the rush of a highway past an open window. He’s done this for Gansey, he’s done this for Blue.

But now it’s early—time waits for Noah Czerny, all the time in the world. The windows are rolled up and the Pig has not broken down yet, and Ronan has been given control of the stereo, loud enough to drown out any thoughts of feeling.

Beside Noah, Blue shifts. She looks away from the window and straight through him.

There is so much he wants to say. “It’s getting late,” he says.

“Yeah,” Blue agrees, stifling a yawn. “I can’t believe I have  _school_  tomorrow.”

Noah supposes none of the real world seems real to her anymore. That, maybe, it’s closer to how he sees it, now. Detached.

“You’ll get through it,” he tells her.

He doesn’t mean school. Blue knows that. She smiles.

“So will you,” she says, softly, as Ronan turns the radio to another station and Gansey keeps his eyes on the road.

Noah comes back to this moment again and again, as he feels time unwinding. He revisits it and sometimes he closes his eyes, sometimes he keeps them open. Every time, he leans into the way her hand slides over his, the way their fingers fit together, the way he knows it would make him feel. No-one can take that away from him.

They pull up at 300 Fox Way. Gansey beams at Blue, although he doesn’t know it yet, and Ronan slouches further down in his seat, scowling through a smile, although he doesn’t know it yet. Noah watches Blue leave, and decides that this time, he’ll skip the drive back.

He fades.


End file.
